Discussing the Future of Wanelo

The Structure of Shopping

When discussing the interface of a shopping website, images of Amazon and Ebay come to mind. Visuals of category lists and product wishlists flood the users imagination of what a “shopping eCommerce” website looks like. However, when analyzing Wanelo, you open the app and you find a page that resembles twitter and and Instagram rather than your typical eCommerce channel. One of the defining characteristics is the opening page. You are given something that resembles a twitter feed. This behaves much like a twitter feed as well. You are greeted with things that resemble twitter posts that are being shown in a feed at real time. Obviously, the kicker here is that these posts are essentially product listings that can be purchased in one mouse click. The other feature that resembles more social media rather than eCommerce is that trending feature. This feature displays the most popular items for the day in a way that is similar to Twitters trending system. It lists items and categories that are popular minus obviously the excessive hashtags that are associated with twitter. Then you have your feed which is your specific brands and the items that they have posted up to that point. This resembles a Facebook feed with plenty of text, articles, and actual purchases related to the pages that you follow. Moving on from the home screen you find things that are regularly found on eCommerce sites such as amazon. Within the browse menu, you are given the option to look at items by catagory and shop the traditional way. This is more characteristic of an eCommerce website and something that we could definitely expect from Wanelo given the nature of the site. Moving on to Alerts, you again encounter a feature that you would normally find on twitter or facebook as this is a function that would post legitimate news stories relating to clothing and style from around the web. This trend of social media like characteristics really diversify s Wanelo in a way that none of its competitors have ever tried. It fits perfectly into the socially oriented audience that is its primary audience. The founder stated it like this,“We’re building a metalayer on top of commerce,” she said. “The industry is fragmented and we’re bringing them into an interconnected network. You can find any store on Wanelo.” Shes basically saying that the different structure of the the site is attracting people from both the social and eCommerce sectors. The final of the interface is the Me function and it serves to manage your account and your personal details within.